A srange thing happened....

[Mick Ralph]

hi people Well, as I wrote last week I was having problems with water pumping out of the radiator and then oil getting in to the water. As Errol suggested a blown head gasket I decided to pull the head off and have a look.  There was no obvious signs of the gasket (which was only 3000kms old) having blown. so i took the head to the engine reconditioners for their opinion. They reckoned that the (normal) corrosion problems were the cause and suggested a head reconditioning job. So,  they welded up two of the water jacket holes, shaved it flat again  (5thou off), and replaced the valve guides and seals, pressure tested it and gave it back to me. (is $280 a good price?). So  I put it all back together exactly the way it came apart. I had marked the timing chain and cam gear with paint and used that as a reference. It went back together perfectly and I thought that it would just start on the turn of the key... Guess what??  It wouldn't start!!!!! It just popped and banged.... So I pulled the distributor cap and rocker cover off and turned the crank to TDC and the distributor rotor was pointing to No 4 cyl with the valves closed on No 1.. How could that be?? I asked myself. I swapped the leads around on the distributor and guess what??  It starts and runs like normal. Really well in fact. Now I didn't touch the distributor or the leads while i was doing the job and the paint marks on the cam sprocket and timing chain line up as per before I pulled it apart. So my questions are   WHY???? Will I do any damage if I keep running the engine as it is? Have I got the cam in 180 about? and is that possible? What else might cause this to happen? In addition when I went to set the valve clearances (cold) I checked the book and .008" for the inlets and .010" for the exhausts was recommended but my shiny new feeler gauges were in metric weren't they?  I used .040" = 1mm as a guide and set them  at .25mm exh and .20mm inlet. Is this correct?  Any recommendations for more accuracy? They seem to be ok but I still have one thats faintly noisy so I will be checking them again tomorrow. Well thats about it for now Sorry about the epic Any help will be greatly appreciated cheers Mick BTW   Engine is L20B  1mm os     Big port head     twin 45's    76 degree cam There is a total of .009"  off the head with .010" shims under the cam towers --membersozdat------------------------------------------------------- OZDAT Mailing List Please Note:- Send (un)subscribe requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send submissions to [EMAIL PROTECTED] No unauthorised redistribution of this email http://www.ozdat.com/ozdatonline/index.htm http://www.ozdat.com/ozdatonline/listindex.html http://www.mail-archive.com/membersozdat@datascribe.com.au/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------